I have made a proposal to relax the scope of the Commons so-called Precautionary principle
to allow the site to host more of the locally public domain files that are being deleted
because of the US URAA law, and also to keep more photos that have freedom of panorama in
their home country but which might (or might not) be copyright-protected in the US.
This proposal comes out of an extremely long and complicated argument about copyright,
which you don't necessarily need to get into, but it is an attempt to allow Commons to
host more media files while at the same time ensuring that the site remains fully legal
under US law. We can legally take a much more nuanced position than 'Definitely
Free' or 'Definitely Unfree', which is pretty much what we do at present.
Some editors have suggested ignoring US law, which the WMF simply cannot allow to happen,
and this is an attempt to allow us to keep more non-US Public Domain material while still
remaining on the right side of US law.
Put simply, do you agree that Commons should aim to host more files that are public domain
in their home country even if they *might* still be copyright-protected in the US?
Please contribute here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Review_of_Precautionary_principle
Michael